Birth of a City

Reviews

Absolutely loved this video of Broomfield Heights and planning. My dad's house was building permit #49 in the first filing.I was born a year after they moved in July of 58. Some of the pictures of digging foundations were a few hundred yards from the grain elevators off 120th near Old Wadsworth. The Emerald elementary school still has the same playground equipment that we played on 47 years ago. Amazing footage, with homes you could still recognize today. Lots of stories about growing up in Broomfield and the vision that the city planners had was right on with this video. I'll look for more in the archives.

This film about the planning and building of Broomfield Heights was interesting. It was probably made around 1956. For many families Broomfiewld Heights was,and still is,the perfect place to live. I am happy for them.

Reviewer:MCVlog -
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April 8, 2010 Subject:
Product of a Planned Community

This was amazing to see and to find. I was raised in Broomfield. I was 5 years old when my family moved there, and started attending Kohl Elementary School, and later attended Nativity School.

Now looking back I see that I am a product of a planned community. The documentary brought back early memories, and I must say that growing up in Broomfield at that time was a special experience. Front doors unlocked, parks to play in, the city within the highways was open and safe. The ideals that were expressed in the documentary are some of the best things that I carry with me now.

I have now moved around the world a lot, seen many things, filled my head with ideas and information that was only available at the time from Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library, right next to the Dentist Office and the Broomfield Star Builder Newspaper office.

It was a town where we had "The Bank", "The Grocery Store", "The Drug Store". The city fathers put gas stations at the entrance to the town, so we could get our car filled coming and going.

Mostly it was a place to grow a family, and as our large family grew we had a safe place to go all over town. The bowling alley was considered dangerous. They had pinball machines.

My parents are still in the house that I grew up in, and looking at this documentary I see them searching for a place to raise a family, choosing Broomfield, and moving us there. I see my mother and father in these images, with the clothes of the era, and the hope and ideals that were from a time that Eisenhower passed the Presidency to Kennedy, and a torch was passed to that generation.

Looking at this did not make me want to return to the past. That is never possible. It was also a past where in first grade the whole town had regular drills with air raid alarms that "warned us" of a nuclear attack, and we were instructed to duck under our desks at Kohl School and cover ourselves from broken glass. Of course, our skin would have melted, but we were prepared.

No, we can't return to the past. I am cautious about the idea. That was then.

Now we can plan our own communities, in whatever manner we are able to arrange them. Hopefully with tolerance and open hearts.

This documentary makes me appreciate the gift that I had to be raised with an ideal, albeit naive, that I can carry with me now.

Reviewer:ColoradoRuss -
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September 9, 2003 Subject:
Where they are Now

Oddly enough, Broomfield Heights has finally realized the dream of the bombastic narrative and has gone beyond a city and is now City and County of Broomfield. The population is currently between 30 and 35 thousand as predicted by the Turnpike Land Company. While it may be a bit of a bedroom community for Denver and Boulder it is not the sort of suburb assumed by the two previous, rather cynical reviews of the film. It has a thriving technical park and other industry. The site of the original "giant shopping mall" is home to a Target and a couple of serviving restaurants and professional services and is hardly noticeable but much land has been annexed in the formation of the new "city and county of" and the shopping district has been recreated as a new high end mall and shopping village a bit closer to the front range and Highway 36 to allow easy access from Boulder and Denver. The city's massive new recreation center is nearing completion and it is merely the begining of the new plans for the downtown.
There are numerous "developments" withing the city limits now so it has the begining of its own "urban sprawl" these days. Still, it is a thriving growing town, city whatever term makes you most comfortable that has its own identity and a view to the future.
It would be silly to think the film was something other than a "commercial for living in this 'city' or 'town'", why else would it have been made? But just because the company that started the venture was looking for a profit (they were red blooded American capitalists after all, even if they do invoke the idealism of Greeley) doesn't mean the people who settled here were anything less. Stop in sometime, you might like the place.

This really should be called Birth of a Suburb. The planning and building of Broomfield Heights, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, is shown. You know what you're in for when you find out that the "city" is planned around a giant shopping mall. Now I don't live anywhere near Denver, but I just bet Broomfield Heights is just another neighborhood in its urban sprawl by now. After all, it is a "suburban dream of yesterday." Still, this movie is fun to mst, as it has bombastic, newsreel-style narration.
Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ***. Weirdness: **. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

Reviewer:Spuzz -
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July 22, 2003 Subject:
There's a difference between a 'city' and a 'subdivision'

In this film, the building of the 'city' of Broomfield Heights, Colorado is documented. Men meet, plans are drawn up, contractors come in, houses are built and people come. One wonders if this is not one big commercial for living in this "city" or "town" or whatever they seem to call it from one instance to the next. The film didn't really capture my attention. A better film on this site with a similar topic is the 1965 Parade Of Homes.